Out of touch? PLL

[ovIm]

That is a vast exaggeration.
Through those 11 years, another thing the community always praised was the whole thing of: "If there's no content or things for you to do in the game, it is okay to play other games in-between. FFXIV is a game that respects player time." Not exact words, but as Yoshi-P said. So, why is it different now? Who knows.

Its different because there are players that actually want to play the game, but Square Enix refuses to fill it with the content that we had in the past to fill those niches. Things like Field Operations, Deep Dungeon, or the new Variant Dungeons, to name a few. If you are not interested in "single room with boss" content, the game currently offers little of replay value or of substance to you. This is a different problem to tackle than respecting a players time, frankly.
Being able to make meaningful progress in a few hours a week is a good design value of FF14, but that only works if there is content there that people want to engage with to reach a goal of their chosing.

[OMGJesuis66]

Its different because there are players that actually want to play the game, but Square Enix refuses to fill it with the content that we had in the past to fill those niches. Things like Field Operations, Deep Dungeon, or the new Variant Dungeons, to name a few. If you are not interested in "single room with boss" content, the game currently offers little of replay value or of substance to you. This is a different problem to tackle than respecting a players time, frankly.
Being able to make meaningful progress in a few hours a week is a good design value of FF14, but that only works if there is content there that people want to engage with to reach a goal of their chosing.

The fault in that is that they designed everything to be locked behind a queue instead of making the world feel alive.
There's nothing to do in any of the game zones, at any time given, worse even if you already completed your Shared Fates.
Give something to be done in the world, and this changes, but they need to push away from a design system they embraced since... Hard to tell, really. I remember Fates to be meaningful in ARR and HW, but not as much in Stormblood, and world was completely abandoned from Shadowbringers to forward.

[ovIm]

The fault in that is that they designed everything to be locked behind a queue instead of making the world feel alive.
There's nothing to do in any of the game zones, at any time given, worse even if you already completed your Shared Fates.
Give something to be done in the world, and this changes, but they need to push away from a design system they embraced since... Hard to tell, really. I remember Fates to be meaningful in ARR and HW, but not as much in Stormblood, and world was completely abandoned from Shadowbringers to forward.

You are not wrong there, and I do agree. The game zones are empty backdrops used for MSQ and then mostly ignored, which is a damn shame, thats for sure. They should be filled with life and players engaging with the game.